Our Towns; Town Is Caught, Shellshocked, In Abortion War

By LISA W. FODERARO

Published: November 20, 1990

Correction Appended

DOBBS FERRY, N.Y.—
Many of the 10,000 residents in this Hudson River village consider themselves pro-choice. Probably just as many consider themselves pro-life. But it seems that virtually everyone -- secretaries, professors, lawyers, police officers -- is anti-Operation Goliath.

Operation Goliath is a crusade against an abortion clinic here. Since June 16, the clinic, a target of protests for two years, has become ground zero for the region's anti-abortion ardor. There are Saturday morning rallies and Wednesday night vigils, placards screaming "Auschwitz on the Hudson" and street-corner sermons on murdering babies.

"This is an experiment," explained Anne Marie Booth, a member of Bi-State Operation Rescue Network, or BORN, a Bronx-based group that operates in New York and New Jersey. "The idea is to concentrate on one clinic until there are no more abortions in town."

That could take some time. Dr. Steven G. Kaali, the medical director of the clinic, the Women's Medical Pavilion, where 2,500 abortions are performed each year along with pap smears and sterilizations, owns the land, the building and the business. He's not budging. "If they think this is going to break me, it's a laughing matter," he said.

In the meantime, the central conflict for residents in this unassuming suburb is not when they believe life begins. It is whether their patience will last until the state of siege ends.

On a recent Sunday, the Rev. Joseph Gilmore of South Presbyterian Church passed the microphone to parishioners "a la Donahue," as he put it, to measure the mood. "There was a crescendo of weariness from Operation Go liath," he said, "with the trap being a simultaneous com mitment to the First Amendment."

Since June, Goliath has cost Dobbs Ferry $38,642 in police and court overtime. The weekly protests have cost Westchester County hundreds of thousands of dollars as scores of people arrested for chaining themselves to the clinic have refused to give their names, spending months in jail awaiting court dates, at a cost of $126 a day.

Many here resent that so few of the protesters are from Westchester County, let alone Dobbs Ferry. Of 400 people arrested at the clinic in the last two years, only a handful have been from Westchester. "They don't picket clinics in their own neighborhoods because their taxes will go up," complained Paul J. Feiner, a county legislator.

Traffic is often knotted on Saturdays, since the 19-year-old clinic fronts Ashford Avenue, a winding cross-route. "You can't go anywhere unless you know the back roads," said Nancy Vitagliano, a 36-year-old homemaker.

The psychological fallout has stung the most. The clinic faces a park, ballfields and a pool. All summer and fall, children were told that babies were killed across the street. Pictures of aborted fetuses appeared in car windows as motorists paused at traffic lights.

"We have people on both sides of the abortion issue, just like anywhere," said Mayor Donald P. Marra. "But all of them are fed up with what's happening to our village."

Mayor Marra won't let his children open the mailbox anymore, with lurid anti-abortion mailings outnumbering bills. Police Chief Frank T. Perilli has had to arrive at the clinic by 6 A.M. every Saturday since June. Luba Iler, the village justice, had to sentence a bishop to prison.

The protests have spawned strange scenes on the same streets where youngsters painted pumpkins on shop windows at Halloween. One rally drew members of the Nazi Party, the Communist Party, the Gay Liberation Party, the AIDS group Act-Up, Women Against Men and men's rights organizations, all seeking a spotlight for their own agendas. Women shouted: "Get your rosaries off my ovaries." Men shouted: "If she don't abort, we gotta pay." Demonstrators concerned about AIDS hurled condoms at nuns.

Operation Goliath has rallied local supporters of abortion rights. Eight hundred paid $1 each to publish their names in two full-page ads in a weekly paper denouncing the demonstrators' tactics and supporting the clinic.

At the same time, the operation has alienated many who oppose abortion. "You don't jam a bloody fetus into the face of a 5-year-old," said the Rev. Terry Attridge, a Catholic priest at Sacred Heart Church. For its lack of support, the church has itself become a target: Protesters recently prevented a funeral procession from leaving.

As residents recoil, Operation Goliath seems not only here to stay but likely to spread.

"There are other sites under consideration," Ms. Booth said. But Randi Fallor, the clinic's executive director, notes that in the Bible, David ultimately slays Goliath. She is confident that Dobbs Ferry will, too.

Correction: November 29, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final The Our Towns column on Nov. 20, about anti-abortion protests outside a medical clinic in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., misidentified a group that has rallied in support of the clinic. The group, known as WHAM, is Women's Health Action and Mobilization, not Women Against Men.